What is patriarchy? A society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male privilege by being male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered. It is also organized around an obsession with control and involves as one of its aspects the oppression of women. — Allan G. Johnson
“You’ve watched the fight, you’ve watched the tactics,” Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told the crowd at the recent so-called “Values Voters Summit of “religious” conservative. “But here’s what I want to tell you, in the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the U.S. Supreme Court …. Don’t get rattled by all of this. We’re gonna plow right through it and do our job.”
“Do[ing] our job” to McConnell means to “plow right through” the facts and details, which could be found if he and the full Senate committed to conducting a thorough investigation, but this seems not to be in the cards.
Instead, McConnell and many other conservatives have already judged Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual abuse against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as politically motivated stalling tactics without merit, as they and others had done with Anita Hill’s charges of sexual misconduct against Clarence Thomas back in 1991.
Whether it be allegations of sexual abuse by the estimated one-in-three female soldiers who experience sexual assaults by their male counterparts and higher-ups within the military establishment, of young boys over a 15-year period by former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky; convictions of sexual abuse on young children by priests that has rocked the Catholic Church, patriarchal social institutions frequently close ranks to protect alleged perpetrators at the expense of alleged sufferers.
As they model a culture of conspiratorial silence, institutions send the defiant message that they care more about their institutions’ reputations and political considerations than the alleged targets of sexual harassment and assault.
Social customs and norms reinforce many shared preconceptions about the sexes. Some of these may be inconsistent or even contradictory, but they share the common element that they prescribe rules of conduct for us all. These preconceived notions, or stereotypes, become standardized mental pictures that societies hold representing oversimplified opinions, attitudes, of judgments.
Language itself often reinforces sexist stereotypes.
Indeed, the language we use expresses the way we experience the world around us, and the words people use in talking about the sexes reveal social attitudes that tend to maintain sexist behaviors.
When males and females both exhibit similar outward behaviors, the sex we are assigned at birth will often determine the societal stereotype affixed to that behavior.
For example, what may be understood as “assertive” behavior in a man may be called “pushiness” in a woman. A man may be being “enthusiastic” or “passionate,” whereas a woman is accused of being “emotional” or “on the rag.” Where a man is viewed as “confident” or “firm,” a woman, on the other hand, is considered “stubborn” or “b–chy.”
When a woman aims to be a corporate executive, stepping outside the gender role assigned to her, she is sometimes accused of “trying to be like a man” and considered “too masculine.”
Though referring to non-human animals, these names are sometimes applied to people depending on their assigned sex. For example, people refer to males as “studs,” “stallions,” “bucks,” “wolves,” and “lions,” whereas females are “foxes,” “kittens,” “pussies,” “bunnies,” “birds,” “chicks,” “lambs,” “b–ches,” “shrews,” “cows,” “dogs,” “nags,” “beavers,” and “sows.”
The animals used to refer to males signify bravery or sexual prowess, while those applied to females tend to be either negative in tone or they cast females in the role of sexually-passive objects.
Other words, usually used as “masculine” and “feminine” nouns, have not-so-subtle differences in meaning that reflect the values placed on males over females. Masculine nouns include “brave,” “king,” “wizard,” “landlord,” “patron,” “grandfatherly advice,” “sir,” “master,” “bachelor,” “host,” “player,” “red-blooded American,” “the stronger sex.”
Feminine nouns include “squaw,” “queen,” “dame,” “broad,” “witch,” “landlady,” “matron,” “old wives’ tale,” “the weaker sex,” “madam,” “ho,” “whore,” “slut,” “nymphomaniac,” “maiden,” “mistress,” “bachelorette,” “hostess,” “old maid,” “old bag,” “easy,” “frigid,” she has a “maiden name,” and is a “cock tease.”
In addition, some words seem to apply almost exclusively to females, such as “flirt,” “moody,” and “hysterical,” carrying negative connotations. In fact, the term “hysteria” from the 19th century C.E. was used to refer to women only and was thought to be caused by a disturbance in the uterus, from the so-called “wondering” or “floating womb.”
Taken in tandem, these linguistic double-standards reflect the sexism still enforced within our society.
Throughout history, examples abound of male domination over the rights and lives of women and girls. Men denied women the vote until women fought hard and demanded the rights of political enfranchisement, though women in some countries today still are restricted from voting.
Strictly enforced gender-based social roles mandated without choice that women’s only option was to remain in the home to undertake cleaning and childcare duties; women were and continue to be by far the primary target of harassment, abuse, physical assault, and rape by men.
Women were and remain locked out of many professions; rules required that women teachers relinquish their jobs after marriage; in fact, the institution of marriage itself was structured on a foundation of male domination with men serving as the so-called “head of the household” and taking on sole ownership of all property thereby restricting these rights from women.
In other words, women have been constructed as second-class and even third-class citizens, but certainly not as victims, because through it all, women as a group have challenged the inequities and have pushed back against patriarchal constraints.
Though many women and men are fully aware of the continuing existence of sexism and male privilege, and they are working tirelessly for its eradication, many others, however, fail to perceive its harmful effects on themselves and others. This apparent invisibility of sexism and male privilege in many countries, in fact, not only fortifies but, indeed, strengthens this form of oppression and privilege by perpetuating patriarchal hegemony in such a way as to avoid detection.
Male dominance, therefore, is maintained by its relative invisibility (though for many of us, it stands as blatantly obvious), and with this relative invisibility, privilege escapes analysis and scrutiny, interrogation and confrontation by many.
Dominance is perceived as unremarkable or “normal,” and when anyone poses a challenge or attempts to reveal its true impact and significance, those in the dominant group brand them as “subversive” or even “accuse” them of being “overly analytical” or “too sensitive.” Possibly those who make these accusations are not themselves sufficiently analytical or sensitive.
Within a patriarchal system of male domination, cisgender heterosexual male bodies matter more, while “othered” bodies matter less. These “othered” bodies include female and intersex bodies, and bodies that violate the “rules” for the reproduction and maintenance of the dominant patriarchal system, such as trans, gender diverse, non-binary, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual bodies, and bodies with disabilities. In addition, within many Western societies, non-European-heritage bodies are regarded also as “othered” abject bodies.
The United States stands at a critical cultural juncture in which victims of sexual harassment and assault are stepping out of the shadows of isolation and fear to challenge abusive patriarchal power, domination, and privilege.
Recently their testimony has taken down several prominent high-visibility men in numerous spheres of life, from political to entertainment and media. By doing so, these former victims have empowered others to step out and speak up not only against specific men but most notably against a patriarchal system of oppression.
Within a patriarchal society that transmits distorted binary gender extremes, questions inevitably arise from men:
- How dare women demand their reproductive freedoms, which would reduce or even take away (the male) making the decision whether to carry or abort my genetic offspring?
- How dare a woman choose not to marry a man?
- How dare women compete with men for a high social position?
- How dare gay men think of coming on to straight men?
- How dare transmen take on the privileges by transitioning that men assigned at birth have “earned”?
- How dare transwomen relinquish male privilege and betray their gender (read as betray patriarchy itself)?
- How dare intersex people not choose to “become either one or the other”?
Toxic forms of hypermasculinity require the promotion and use of firearms to keep at bay the intensive psychosocial compulsive fear and dread of penetration from bullets, and by extension the gaze of gay and bisexual men, and the female gaze since patriarchy promises males the right to the aggressive outward intrusive gaze, the right of penetration of “others.”
Laws are built upon and reflect the society in which they are meant to affect. Our patriarchal individualistic society opposes and inhibits women’s reproductive freedoms, encourages the inequities in salaries between men and women, establishes and maintains the massive development of wealth for a very few while encouraging the enormous financial disparities between the very rich and everyone else, and many other issues.
And when patriarchal social and family structures converge with patriarchal religious systems, which reinforce strictly defined gender hierarchies of male domination, women and girl’s oppression and oppression of those who transgress sexual-, sexuality-, and gender binaries and boundaries became inevitable.
The current cultural shift has been long in coming.
It must not be considered, though, as arising from a quick and sudden earthquake, but more from a long-simmering and often erupting volcano that changes the entire landscape from time to time. The latest victims of this patriarchal system to speak out are standing on the strong and firm shoulders of multiple generations over several centuries, to the activists in the first, second, and third waves of feminists, from the courage of individuals like Sojourner Truth to Anita Hill to Anthony Rapp to Leigh Corfman.
As volcanic eruptions alter forever the physical landscape, all the courageous upstanders against patriarchal oppression will forever alter the cultural and social landscape.
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